This is going to be a strange one. I just woke up. For the first time in a long while I woke up early on a Sunday. I have to write this quickly before the thought evaporates.

I had a dream. And like most dreams, it was strange.

Earlier in the week I ran into one of my high school mates in town. A good friend of mine, the sort we bonded with over shared plates of githeri, posho, and the occasional Founders’ Day Dinner at the old Cliff Richard Hall in Starehe. I was glad the floods hadn’t swept him away, because he has always been light on his feet and frequently found in places he probably shouldn’t be.

Let’s call him Mo.

We exchanged the usual pleasantries. Neither of us has a wife yet, so naturally we talked about the weather and school, and Ruto and his minions. He’s at KU, studying one of those engineering courses whose name alone requires a deep breath and a glass of water to pronounce. The kind of degree that might one day propel him straight to NASA. He likes space and all things cosmic. I told him I’m in Kabete, learning the noble art of keeping the taxman away from drug barons’ bank accounts.

As expected, he wasn’t heading anywhere in particular when we met in town. Mo has never liked being cooped up in one place for too long. He said hopping on a matatu from KU to town and wandering around helps him think. Clears his mind. Sometimes he walks through the forests and pathways behind KU’s massive complex. He told me I should walk more too, adding helpfully that my stomach was beginning to introduce itself before the rest of me. I took the advice graciously. He was a clever fellow. Still is. You can always spot intelligent people by the way they rarely bother to comb their hair properly, and by the way they speak.

We chatted for a while, but gathering nimbus clouds soon hurried us along our separate ways.

I didn’t think much about him or our conversation for the rest of the week. We would meet again, I knew it. Probably at some school function as Old Boys. He had kept himself well, as I had.

But my brain had other plans. It always does.

Last night, after yet another Fede Valverde goal, I went to bed convinced that I had absolutely nothing to write this week.

Then I dreamed.

Lately I’ve been dreaming a lot about time and space. Alternate realities and all that cosmic mumbo jumbo. This is largely fueled by my unhealthy obsession with time travel movies that I’ve been binge-watching. But this time I didn’t dream about any movie characters. I dreamed about Mo. This long-time-no-see friend of mine who is so obsessed with space that he decided to study it in university.

During our nearly five-year stint at Starehe, he was always talking about these things. Time travel theories. Some apparently important dead people who wrote about time travel. Alternate realities. And his favourite idea that dreams might actually be glimpses into other versions of ourselves.

He also firmly believes the moon landing never happened, and that it was yet another grand United States hoax designed to convince China and the rest of the world that they were the undisputed champions of technology.

In my dream I was walking through town along University Way. Inside UoN’s Main Campus, a number of high schools were having a function. The high schoolers would probably call it a ‘funkie’. The strange part was the schools present. Completely random ones. Pumwani Boys in their maroon uniforms. Ng’iya Girls for some reason, in their red sweaters and blue skirts. Bunyore Girls with their elegant ladies dressed in blue. Even one of my hometown schools, Achego Girls. And Starehe too, of course. Their army-red shirts and meticulously ironed blue shorts.

Mo was walking around inside. His shiny shaved head and red-and-blue uniform made him visible from miles away. I was standing outside the fence, watching from the road. When he passed near the fence he saw me. I waved. He seemed to recognize me. In this particular ‘universe’ he was still in high school. A short, bright young man with ambitions soaring as high as the clouds he liked to study. A version of me must have been in high school too, though not at the funkie. I didn’t attend many funkies in my day. Unless the alternate version of me was somehow more social and well-adjusted.

I called Mo by name and waved again from the roadside. He waved back, but he looked startled. At Starehe we sometimes wore civilian clothes and went to town on weekends. He must have thought I’d gotten a pass that day. But I didn’t look like the Reagan he knew. The Reagan he knew had no beard, was slimmer, slightly shorter, and dressed mostly in silk shirts, shorts, and crocs. None of this polo shirt and jeans business.

He squinted for a better look. He looked confused, like his mind was playing tricks on him. Meanwhile I had my usual cheerful grin, the one I wear whenever I spot someone I know.

He started moving closer to the fence to see and hear what I was doing outside. Unfortunately for him, a group of girls from Bunyore suddenly surrounded him for a chat, like a blue tidal wave of beauty and bunda. He gave me one last look and a small nod, the kind of nod from someone who has something to say but cannot say it yet. Probably a coded message meaning, “Let’s talk about this tonight at school.”

I continued walking toward Moi Avenue, quietly impressed that Mo was not a ‘breezer’ at funkies like I was. A breezer, for the uninitiated, is someone who cannot speak to girls without suddenly developing a deep interest in the floor tiles.

Then things got stranger.

I suddenly saw Mo crossing the street from Jeevanjee Gardens with a laptop bag slung across his shoulder. I nearly tripped over the wave of pedestrians beside me.

It was Mo.

But this Mo had a growing goatee, a full head of hair, and was wearing crisp tailored trousers and a shirt. He looked like he had just left an important meeting. He was hurrying toward the Super Metro buses at Archives before the rains could trap him in town.

I followed him. At this point I suspected I might be losing my mind.

It was him. Same head shape. Same walking style. Same slightly rebellious hair. I couldn’t believe it. I kept tossing and turning in bed trying to escape this bizarre reality, but the whistling wind from outside and the cold air in the room only made me clutch my pillow even tighter.

I finally woke up a few minutes ago, dazed and drenched in sweat from hurriedly chasing Mo across imaginary Nairobi.

I am still amazed by the games my mind plays. I no longer dream about women or becoming a venture capitalist tycoon. Now I dream strange dreams that make reality feel questionable and, frankly, a little dull.

I remember one of Mo’s theories. He once said we could be in the same building as alternate versions of ourselves and never even realize it. Last night I had two versions of Mo within the same two-kilometre radius, and neither of them seemed aware of the other.

I think I need to go for a walk. My mind is starting to play tricks on me. If this is what I dream about, I wonder what an alternate version of me who does hard drugs dreams about. Probably women and booze.

✍🏽Reagan.